1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communication. More particularly, the present invention relates to detecting the position of a user equipment in a wireless communication environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication networks generally allow for voice and/or wireless data communications between user equipments, pagers or data terminals that communicate using RF signals. In recent years, a number of location-based service systems have been implemented or proposed for wireless networks. Such systems generally involve determining positioning information for user equipments and processing the positioning information to provide an output desired for a particular application. Furthermore, recent advances in wireless data communications have made possible the utilization of User Equipments (UEs) to access information and/or services available on data networks, such as the Internet and the associated World Wide Web.
Accordingly, a number of data network location-based services, which utilize the position of a UE, are currently in operation to provide localized information for a requesting UE. Some of these systems are managed by wireless network providers to offer location-based services to their customers. In such systems, a positioning session is initiated between a UE and a positioning server (e.g., SLMC in UMTS, and eSLMC in LTE) to obtain required transaction data from the UE. These transaction data form a basis to estimate geographic location and velocity of the UE. The above systems determine position of the customers UE based on time of arrival (TOA), OTDOA, or E-OTD methods. The wireless network provider may utilize the position information to provide location specific information to the customer or other destination, or the position information may be provided to an external location-based service provider who provides location specific information, which is forwarded to the customer or other destination. Several such positioning sessions may be initiated and ongoing at a single point of time with various or same positioning servers. However, all the positioning sessions may appear as the same positioning session as they are not uniquely identified and hence a process of tracking transactions, such as capabilities updates, assistance data & measurement/location reports, etc., with respect to each of the positioning sessions may become cumbersome.
For MT/NI location request, existing systems identify a positioning session between an MME and an eSLMC using a unique identifier. The same session identifier can be used as the session identifier between the eSLMC and the UE. For a mobile originated location request, the UE may autonomously allocate a session ID to the positioning session during initiation of a mobile originated location request. However, different UEs may allocate separate identifiers to a positioning session with the same MME/eSLMC, leading to collision across different session identifiers associated with the positioning session.